Forced Foxconn interns may have tampered with the PS4, and now some systems are failing

The Playstation 4’s launch has been considered a success by and large so far, but apparently the scourge of forced internships may be coming back to haunt it. According to the International Business Times, some of the student interns who were forced to work on the PS4 at Foxconn’s Yantai plant are now claiming to have tampered with some of the machines during production, doing things like preventing them from displaying images.

This is all according to a forum post that has since been deleted (but there’s a screenshot here), which reads:

Such a high-end product, and a crucial step in Sony and Microsoft’s challenge of Apple, but it’s unfortunate the little Japanese gave it [the PS4] to Foxconn [to manufacture] and Foxconn gave it to we Beixin interns. They messed up, they really messed up. Foxconn didn’t see us as human, so we didn’t see [the PS4] as a quality product. We coped and coped, hoping only that this product could operate normally. Hah! When the PS4 launches on September 9 [sic], that’ll be the day Sony has massive losses and Foxconn collapses!!

Needless to say, there’s pretty much no way of verifying any of the information in this post or even the true identity of its author, and it definitely reads a bit strangely. Some consumers are reporting issues with their PS4s, but it’s probably too early to tell whether any tampering actually occurred and, if it did, on what scale.

As we reported previously, Foxconn employed what were essentially forced student laborers in the manufacture of the PS4. Students were told that a Foxconn internship was mandatory — even if it had nothing whatsoever to do with their majors — and that if they quit, they could not graduate from college. These internships were arranged by Foxconn in collaboration with participating colleges, and this was not the first time Foxconn has used less-than-voluntary student interns to pad out its labor force during production crunches.

(via IBT)